Imajica

  Her gaze became more intent at this, and he was certain she understood every word he was saying. Her hand still proffered its gift, determined he should take it.

  “Go on,” Jude said.

  As much at the behest of the eyes as at Jude’s words, Gentle reached down and gingerly took the stone from Huzzah’s hand. There was some considerable strength in her. The stone was heavy: heavy and cool.

  “Now our peace is really made,” Jude said.

  “I didn’t know we’d been at war,” Gentle replied.

  “That’s the worst kind, isn’t it?” Jude said. “But it’s over now. It’s over forever.”

  There was a subtle modulation in the plush of the water-curtained arch behind her, and she glanced around. Her expression had been grave, but when she looked back at Gentle she had a smile on her face.

  “I have to go,” she said as she stood.

  The child was chuckling and clutching the air.

  “Will I see you again?” Gentle said.

  Jude shook her head slowly, looking at him almost indulgently.

  “What for?” she murmured. “We’ve said all we have to say. We’ve forgiven each other. It’s finished.”

  “Will I be allowed to stay in the city?”

  “Of course,” she said with a little laugh. “But why would you want to?”

  “Because I’ve come to the end of the pilgrimage.”

  “Have you?” she said, turning from him to pad towards the arch. “I thought you had one Dominion left.”

  “I’ve seen it. I know what’s there.”

  There was a pause. Then Jude said, “Did Celestine ever tell you her story? She did, didn’t she?”

  “The one about Nisi Nirvana?”

  “Yes. She told it to me, too, the night before the Reconciliation. Did you understand it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Ah.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just that I didn’t either, and I thought maybe . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know what I thought.”

  She was at the archway now, and the child was peering over her shoulder at somebody who’d appeared behind the veil of water. The visitor was not, Gentle thought, quite human.

  “Hoi-Polloi mentioned our other guests, did she?” Jude said, seeing his astonishment. “They came up out of the ocean, to woo us.” She smiled. “Beautiful, some of them. There’s going to be such children. . . .”

  The smile faltered, just a little.

  “Don’t be sad, Gentle,” she said. “We had our time.”

  Then she turned from him and took the child through the curtain. He heard Huzzah laugh to see the face that awaited them on the other side, and saw its owner put his silvery arms around mother and child. Then the light in his eyes brightened, running in the curtain, and when it dimmed the family had gone.

  Gentle waited in the empty chamber for several minutes, knowing Jude wasn’t going to come back, not even certain that he wanted her to but unable to depart until he had fixed in his memory all that had passed between them. Only then did he return to the door and step out into the evening air. There was a different kind of enchantment in the wild wood now. Soft blue mists drooped from the canopy and crept up from the pools. The mellifluous songs of dusk birds had replaced those of noon, and the busy drone of pollinators had given way to breath-wing moths.

  He looked for Monday but failed to find him, and although there was nobody to prevent his loitering in this idyll, he felt ill at ease. This was not his place now. By day it was too full of life, and by night, he guessed, too full of love. It was a new experience for him to feel so utterly immaterial. Even on the road, hanging back from the fires while nonsense tales were told, he’d always known that if he’d simply opened his mouth and identified himself he would have been feted, encircled, adored. Not so here. Here he was nothing: nothing and nobody. There were new growths, new mysteries, new marriages.

  Perhaps his feet understood that better than his head, because before he’d properly confessed his redundancy to himself they were already carrying him away, out under the water-clad arches and down the slope of the city. He didn’t head towards the delta but towards the desert, and though he’d not seen the purpose in this journey when Jude had hinted at it, he didn’t now deny his feet their passage.

  When he’d last emerged from the gate that led out into the desert he’d been carrying Pie, and there’d been a throng of refugees around them. Now he was alone, and though he had no other weight to carry besides his own, he knew the trek ahead of him would exhaust what little sum of will was left to him. He wasn’t much concerned at this. If he perished on the way, it scarcely mattered. Whatever Jude had said, his pilgrimage was at an end.

  As he reached the crossroads where he’d encountered Floccus Dado, he heard a shout behind him and turned to see a bare-chested Monday galloping towards him through the dwindling light, mounted on a mule, or a striped variation thereof.

  “What were you doing, going without me?” he demanded when he reached Gentle’s side.

  “I looked for you, but you weren’t around. I thought you’d gone off to start a family with Hoi-Polloi.”

  “Nah!” said Monday. “She’s got funny ideas, that girl. She said she wanted to introduce me to some fish. I said I wasn’t too keen on fish, ‘cause the bones get stuck in your throat. Well, that’s right, innit? People choke on fish, regular. Anyhow, she looks at me like I just farted and says maybe I should go with you after all. An’ I said, I didn’t even know you was leaving. So she finds me this ugly little fuck”—he slapped the hybrid’s flank—“an’ points me in this direction.” He glanced back at the city. “I think we’re well out of there,” he said, dropping his voice. “There was too much water, if you ask me. D’you see it at the gate? A great fuckin’ fountain.”

  “No, I didn’t. That must be recent.”

  “See? The whole place is going to drown. Let’s get the fuck out of here. Hop on.”

  “What’s the beast called?”

  “Tolland,” Monday said with a grin. “Which way are we headed?”

  Gentle pointed towards the horizon.

  “I don’t see nothin’.”

  “Then that must be the right direction.”

  IV

  Ever the pragmatist, Monday hadn’t left the city without supplies. He’d made a sack of his shirt and filled it to bursting with succulent fruits, and it was these that sustained them as they traveled. They didn’t halt when night came, but kept up their steady pace, taking turns to walk beside the beast so as not to exhaust it and giving it at least as much of the fruit as they ate themselves, plus the piths, cores, and skins of their own portions.

  Monday slept much of the time that he rode, but Gentle, despite his fatigue, remained wide awake, too vexed by the problem of how he was going to set this wasteland down in his book of maps to indulge himself in slumber. The stone Huzzah had given him was constantly in his hand, coaxing so much sweat from his pores that several times a little pool gathered in the cup of his palm. Discovering this, he would put the stone away, only to find a few minutes later that he’d taken it out of his pocket without even realizing that he’d done so, and his fingers were once again making play with it.

  Now and then he’d cast a backward glance towards Yzordderrex, and it made quite a sight, the benighted flanks of the city glittering in countless places, as though the waters in its streets had become perfect mirrors for the stars. Nor was Yzordderrex the only source of such splendor. The land between the gates of the city and the track that they were following also gleamed here and there, catching its own fragments of the sky’s display.

  But all such enchantments were gone by the first sign of dawn. The city had long since disappeared into the distance behind them, and the thunderheads in front were lowering. Gentle recognized the baleful color of this sky from the glimpse he and Tick Raw had snatched of the First. Though the Erasure still sealed Hapexamendios’ pestilence from the Second, its taint was to
o persuasive to be obliterated, and the bruisy heavens loomed vaster as they traveled, lying along the entire horizon and climbing to their zenith.

  There was some good news, however: they weren’t alone. As the wretched remains of the Dearthers’ tents appeared on the horizon, so too did a congregation of God spotters, thirty or so, watching the Erasure. One of them saw Gentle and Monday approaching, and word of their arrival passed through the small crowd until it reached one who instantly pelted in the travelers’ direction.

  “Maestro! Maestro!” he yelled as he came.

  It was Chicka Jackeen, of course, and he was in a fair ecstasy to see Gentle, though after the initial flood of greetings the talk became grim.

  “What did we do wrong, Maestro?” he wanted to know. “This isn’t the way it was meant to be, is it?”

  Gentle did his weary best to explain, astonishing and appalling Chicka Jackeen by turns.

  “So Hapexamendios is dead?”

  “Yes, he is. And everything in the First is His body. And it’s rotting to high heaven.”

  “What happens when the Erasure decays?”

  “Who knows? I’m afraid there’s enough rot to stink out the Dominion.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Chicka Jackeen wanted to know.

  “I don’t have one.”

  The other looked confounded at this. “But you came all the way here,” he said. “You must have had some notion or other.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Gentle replied, “but the truth is, this was the only place left for me to go.” He stared at the Erasure. “Hapexamendios was my Father, Lucius. Perhaps in my heart of hearts I believe I should be in the First with Him.”

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, boss—” Monday broke in.

  “Yes?”

  “That’s a bloody stupid idea.”

  “If you’re going to go in, so am I,” Chicka Jackeen said. “I want to see for myself. A dead God’s something to tell your children about, eh?”

  “Children?”

  “Well,” said Jackeen, “it’s either that or write my memoirs, and I haven’t got the patience for that.”

  “You?” Gentle said. “You waited two hundred years for me, and you say you haven’t got patience?”

  “Not any more,” came the reply. “I want a life, Maestro.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  “But not before I’ve seen the First.”

  They’d reached the Erasure by now, and while Chicka Jackeen went among his colleagues to tell them what he and the Reconciler were going to do, Monday once again piped up with his opinion on the venture.

  “Don’t do it, boss,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to prove. I know you were pissed off that they didn’t throw a party in Yzordderrex, but fuck ‘em, I say—or, rather, don’t. Let ‘em have their fish.”

  Gentle laid his hands on Monday’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This isn’t a suicide mission.”

  “So what’s the big hurry? You’re dead beat, boss. Have a sleep. Eat something. Get strong. There’s all of tomorrow not touched yet.”

  “I’m fine,” Gentle said. “I’ve got my talisman.”

  “What’s that?”

  Gentle opened his palm and showed Monday the blue stone.

  “A fuckin’ egg?”

  “An egg, eh?” Gentle said, tossing the stone in his hand. “Maybe it is.”

  He threw it up into the air a second time, and it rose, far higher than his muscle had propelled it, way up above their heads. At the summit of its ascent it seemed to hover for a beat and then returned into his hand at leisure, defying the claim of gravity. As it descended it brought the faintest drizzle down with it, cooling their upturned faces.

  Monday cooed with pleasure. “Rain out of nowhere,” he said. “I remember that.”

  Gentle left him bathing the grime from his face and went to join Chicka Jackeen, who had finished explaining his intentions to his colleagues. They all hung back, watching the Maestros with uneasy stares.

  “They think we’re going to die,” Chicka Jackeen explained.

  “They may very well be right,” Gentle said quietly. “Are you certain you want to come with me?”

  “I was never more certain of anything.”

  With that they started towards the ambiguous ground that lay between the solidity of the Second and the Erasure’s vacancy. As they went, one of Jackeen’s friends began to call after him, in distress at his departure. The cry was taken up by several others, their shouts too mingled to be interpreted. Jackeen halted for a moment and glanced back towards the company he was leaving. Gentle made no attempt to urge him on. He ignored the shouts and picked up his speed, the Erasure thickening around him and the smell of the devastation that lay on the other side growing stronger with every step he took. He was prepared for it, however. Instead of holding his breath, he drew the stench of his Father’s rot deep into his lungs, defying its pungency.

  There was another shout from behind him, but this time it wasn’t one of Jackeen’s friends, it was the Maestro himself, his voice colored more by wonder than alarm. Its tone piqued Gentle’s curiosity, and he glanced back over his shoulder to seek Jackeen out, but the nullity had come between them. Unwilling to be delayed, Gentle forged on, a purpose in his stride he didn’t comprehend. His enfeebled legs had found strength from somewhere; his heart was urgent in his chest.

  Ahead, the blinding murk was stirring, the first vague forms of the First’s terrain emerging. And from behind, Jackeen again.

  “Maestro? Maestro! Where are you?”

  Without slowing his stride, Gentle returned the call. “Here!”

  “Wait for me!” Jackeen gasped. “Wait!” He emerged from the void to lay his hand on Gentle’s shoulder.

  “What is it?” Gentle said, looking around at Jackeen, who as if in bliss had dropped the toll of years and was once again a young man, sweaty with awe at the way of feits.

  “The waters,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “They’ve followed you, Maestro. They’ve followed you!”

  And as he spoke, they came. Oh, how they came! They ran to Gentle’s feet in glittering rills that broke against his ankles and his shins and leapt like silver snakes towards his hands—or, rather, towards the stone he held in his hands. And seeing their elation and their zeal, he heard Huzzah’s laughter and felt again her tiny fingers brushing his arm as she passed the blue egg on to him. He didn’t doubt for a moment that she’d known what would come of the gift. So, most likely, had Jude. He’d become their agent at the last, just as he’d become his mother’s, and the thought of that sweet service brought an echo of the child’s laughter to his lips.

  From above, the egg was calling down a drizzle to swell the waters swirling underfoot, and in the space of seconds the patter became a roar, and a deluge descended, violent enough to sluice the murk of the Erasure out of the air. After a few moments, light began to break around the Maestros, the first light this terrain had seen since Hapexamendios had drawn the void over his Dominion. By it, Gentle saw that Jackeen’s exhilaration was rapidly turning to panic.

  “We’re going to drown!” he yelled, fighting to stay on his feet as the water deepened.

  Gentle didn’t retreat. He knew where his duty lay. As the surf broke against their backs, the tide threatening to drag them under, he raised Huzzah’s gift to his lips and kissed it, just as she had done. Then he mustered all his strength and threw the stone out, over the landscape that was being uncovered before them. The egg went from his hand with a momentum that was not his sinews’ work but its own ambition, and instantly the waters went in pursuit of it, dividing around the Maestros and taking their tides off into the wasteland of the First.

  It would take the waters weeks, perhaps even months, to cover the Dominion from end to end, and most of that work would go unwitnessed. But in the next few hours, standing at their vantage point where the City of God had once begun, the Maestros were
granted a glimpse of their labor. The clouds above the First, which had been as inert as the landscape beneath, now began to churn and roil and shed their anguish in stupendous storms, which in turn swelled the rivers that were driving their cleansing way across the rot.

  Hapexamendios’ remains were not despised. With the purpose of the Goddesses fueling their every drop, the waters turned the slaughterhouse over and over and over, scouring the matter of its poisons and sweeping it up into mounds, which the exhilarated air festooned with vapors.

  The first ground that appeared from this tumult was close to the feet of the Maestros and rapidly became a ragged peninsula that stretched fully a mile into the Dominion. The waters broke against it constantly, bringing with every wave another freight of Hapexamendios’ clay to increase its flanks. Gentle was patient for a time and stayed at the border. But he could not resist the invitation forever, and finally, ignoring Jackeen’s words of caution, he set off down the spine of land to better see the spectacle visible from the far end. The waters were still draining from the new earth, and here and there lightning still ran on the slopes, but the ground was solid enough, and there were seedlings everywhere, carried, he presumed, from Yzordderrex. If so, there would be abundant life here in a little while.

  By the time he’d reached the end of the peninsula the clouds overhead were begining to clear somewhat, lighter for their furies. Farther off, of course, the process he’d been privileged to witness was just beginning, as the storms spread in all directions from their point of origin. By their blazes he glimpsed the snaking rivers, going about their work with undiminished ambition. Here on the promontory, however, there was a more benign light. The First Dominion had a sun, it seemed, and though it wasn’t yet warm, Gentle didn’t wait for balmier weather to begin his last labors, but took his album and his pen from his jacket and sat down on the marshy headland to work. He still had the map of the desert between the gates of Yzordderrex and the Erasure to set down, and though these pages would doubtless be the barest in the album, they had to be drawn all the more carefully for that fact: he wanted their very spareness to have a beauty of its own.